An Epiphany

So occasionaly I've been terrified to go to Budapest. It's a huge step in Val and I's life and there's no reason to NOT be scared. However, I, strangely enough, found some pretty heavy wisdom..... in a manga. Yes a manga. Full Metal Alchemist to be specific. After reading the entire series, I finally finished it tonight which is weird. I've been reading it since high school and having something just finish feels a little weird. The quote says:

"A lesson without pain is meaningless. For you cannot gain something without sacrificing something else in return."

I thought this quote was interesting because it showed me that this is true. Although there is the fear and pain of leaving those we love behind, this pain is what makes the experiences worth doing. Our sacrifice will be worth the experiences we gain and the friends that we make. After reading this short quote I don't really fear the unknown and rather I now embrace it with every fiber of my being.

Drawing a Steampunk Magpie :D

I've been feeling pretty down on myself lately. Thinking I'm a terrible artist and won't ever be able to do anything. blah blah blah. Aaaaanyways, in order to make myself feel a little better I decided to draw off of some real pictures as opposed to just drawing from scratch. However I wanted to draw something original using some reference photos rather than just drawing something. This is what I came up with.

The Steampunk Magpie

I'm very happy with how it came out and want to look into making other steampunk inspired animals. Mainly small animals like lizards and such.Thanks to my girlfriend Val for kicking my butt and making me use reference photos :D.

World Traveler

visited 8 states (3.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

I found this on a girl named Lauren's blog. I thought it was really cool.... so of course I got it myself. I can't wait to add a bunch of countries to it in Hungary. It'll be fun to track where Val and I travel to.

On a second note, Val and I have been working on a couple of projects. We just finished an American Ninja Warrior video for this guy and he said, to celebrate, he was going to take us out for sake! WOOT! Never had sake before but I hope it's not going to be like drinking acid. This project has been taking up a lot of our time so we haven't had a lot of time for much else. Especially when you add it to the hours of time spent on looking at http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

Speaking of which, we found a picture of this thing that people are calling creepy charlie.

It's on the site on the picture. The caption on it says:

"Creepy charlie is only a little creepy, mostly it's just shy"

lolz. Aaaanyways, I've been drawing and doing cgi but not a lot. I've been a little too preoccupied with other things, like oh I dunno.... moving to another country. Once we move I'll probably blog about adventures and traveling more than cgi. Well, that's all for now.

Super Render

This is a rendered image of my bot after I got the mental ray rendering going. Mental Ray is just a REALLY good way to render things. It has things such as ambient occlusion which actually calculates how the light would hit an object, where it would bounce off to and keeps that going until it practically becomes black. It makes very realistic pictures because the light particles act almost exactly like real light particles. The thing that is tricky about mental ray, rendering and lights is that you have to find the setting that is needed in the lighting menu and also in the render options. If you forget one nothing will happen. Well, anyways here's the picture!

It looks much more realistic when rendered with mental ray, which is why I can't understand poor quality shows on TV. It's literally just a setting that you turn on and it makes a HUGE difference.

So..... close... to being.... done.....

This is yet another update of my "ToughBot" as I've been calling him. I almost totally finished now.... in a way anyways. I've layed out all of the armor, where it's going to be, and essentially defined how the body is going to be shaped. What's left is to add all of the mechanics, rig, pose and maybe animate if I'm not totally burned out on this guy at that point. So here's the updated pics.

Basic front shot.

Here's the legs. I plan on changing the feet though. Right now these are just place holders.

The back....

and the front!

Tough Bot Update

Here's an update on my progress with my newest creation. Bah! I have way too much on my plate and I don't want to do any of it. All I want is to be in Budapest!!!!!! Right now!!!! *regains composer* Anyways, I worked a little on the torso. If you look at the old torso you can see how different it looks when replaced. It took a lot longer to do this area than I thought it would. Mainly because I didn't know how to make the croch area. If anyone wants to give some feedback I would really appreciate it :D

Kontroll and Taxedermia

Me and Val have been in search of good Hungarian films to watch lately. We came across two movies that we thought would be interesting.


The first was Kontroll.















I absolutely loved this movie. It's about the control officers in the Budapest metro. It's very funny and stays light even when things get intense. It is a dark comedy so if you like that kind of thing check it out. It is also very beautiful, cinematicaly, and also heavy on the symbolism. Great movie!



The second was a movie called Taxedermia.












Although the picture doesn't seem it, this movie was INCREDIBLY disturbing. From vomiting to masturbation, the movie never ceased to push the limits of what can be shown in a movie. It is, after all, not rated. However, this movie is very beautiful. Colors are used very intentionally and it doesn't seem that anything is unnecessary for any one scene. Like Kontroll the movie is heavy on symbolism, showing representations of all the different eras of Hungary from World War 2 to modern times. Brilliant and provocative, I say see this movie once.... maybe. If you don't have a strong constitution, pass it up. Although it was amazing, the sheer darkness and vulgar nature of the film really stop you from enjoying the movie too often but for all you film people out there, check it out.


Also, if anyone knows of some light hearted Hungarian films, let me know!

Sketchbook #2

I was gonna post this tomorrow because I did my last one then but I drew this and was pretty happy with it so I thought I would post it now. I haven't been in a drawing class for a while so I was worried about trying to draw an actual face. I think it came out pretty well. I didn't want to draw the person's eyes that they had so I drew my own creepy ones. Kinda looks like a zombie now. :D So this will be two pages of my sketchbook.

Getting Antsy

I am starting to realize that I want to do a LOT of things for two reasons.
1. I really can not wait to move to Budapest.
and 2. I feel like I'm just sitting around so I want to do something more active.

I am very excited to move and I am not too happy about waiting until August to leave. Of course I will miss everyone but this is going to be the start of our lives. Also, seeing images of people there, the things we've heard, and the thought of living in such an exciting place is driving me crazy. I can't wait to move to such a beautiful city and meet the many hungarians that I'm sure we'll become friends with..... I hope :P.